A melodramatic crime movie about deceit, imposture, greed, its asset is the plot, coming from a revered writer, and it takes us through rain, an inn, a mansion, a hospice, its direction is somewhat impersonal but reasonably skilled, mostly serviceable, the director being one of the labourers of that age, here he followed the age's new trend, the new style (I felt grateful for being spared of the allegedly humorous moments that plagued crime movies made a decade earlier
), in his rendering is defined by a light sobriety, and I think his movie would prove of interest to the writer's buffs, with the necessary caveat that it's more of an impersonal crime movie, than of a faithful transposition of a work, it has the plot, but not the writer's very peculiar atmosphere; I sympathized with the detective, I disliked the psychiatrist, and the leading actor reminded me of a C. Grant impersonator.
A shocking moment is the attack of the watchdog.
This movie could of been much more; the opportunity has been wasted. The feverishness of the writer's ideas has been mitigated, stumped, dimmed, blunted. Notwithstanding, the storytelling is suspenseful and dynamic.
The moments of artistic truth or at least authentic craftsmanship were expect-ably few; in the '30s, many directors preferred to crowd the tropes, to throng them, than to make good use of a few, they practically left them unused, and if here the writer's universe seems impoverished, it's because the director had this mindset. On the other hand, the tone here was sober. It already had been a radio program, a few yrs later it would of made a cool TV series.
A shocking moment is the attack of the watchdog.
This movie could of been much more; the opportunity has been wasted. The feverishness of the writer's ideas has been mitigated, stumped, dimmed, blunted. Notwithstanding, the storytelling is suspenseful and dynamic.
The moments of artistic truth or at least authentic craftsmanship were expect-ably few; in the '30s, many directors preferred to crowd the tropes, to throng them, than to make good use of a few, they practically left them unused, and if here the writer's universe seems impoverished, it's because the director had this mindset. On the other hand, the tone here was sober. It already had been a radio program, a few yrs later it would of made a cool TV series.